Eligible says around 1.6 million mortgage holders are expected to renegotiate their deal by the end of year
A new survey suggests that nearly half a million Britons are set to miss a mortgage payment in the next six months.
AI banking platform Eligible says it has conducted a survey indicating that 492,000 mortgage holders are set to miss a payment in the next six months while 670,000 mortgage holders have already missed a payment in the last 12 months.
It extrapolates its survey to claim that 5,417,000 Brits cite mortgage payments as a significant cause of financial-related stress; and 1,340,000 Brits don’t understand the terms of their mortgage – because they do not communicate with their lender.
Eligible says around 1.6 million mortgage holders are expected to renegotiate their deal by the end of year.
As per Eligible, the onus is increasingly shifting onto banks to provide tailored and proactive real-time communication with their customers, especially in light of the FCA’s introduction of Consumer Duty, which came into effect last summer.
Zahra Hassan, co-founder of Eligible, says: The fundamental problem is that mortgages are a financial product that customers take out only once every 3-5 years. This means that they are not regularly engaging with their mortgage and are not in the loop of what all their options are.
She says: In a wider sense, rising interest rates, coupled with higher energy and living costs, heighten vulnerability to default.
She added: What’s needed – and what we are doing at Eligible – is an active two-way dialogue, and AI-powered systems such as Eligible facilitate this by initiating interactions with customers and monitoring their responses to gather insights. For instance, we proactively send educational content to customers to evaluate their anxiety levels and their understanding of their current financial products. Based on this information, we can fine-tune our approach by crafting more personalised educational content and adjusting our tone to be softer, supportive, and empathetic. This way, borrowers can better appreciate that lenders are here to assist them.